Buddha said, "It is by oneself that evil is done, it is by oneself that one is afflicted. It is by oneself that evil is done, it is by oneself that one is purified. Purity and impurity are individual matters; no one purifies another."

I don't know the inconceivable yogi;

How can birth and death exist?

The emperor of China asked the founder of Zen, "What is the ultimate meaning of the holy truths?" The Zen founder replied, "Empty, nothing holy." The emperor asked, "Who are you?" The Zen founder replied, "I don't know."

The "inconceivable yogi" is the Buddha-nature, or true self, which is not the socially conditioned personality, or the idea of self or image of the ego. Because this nature is not identical to the subjective stream of consciousness, it does not come and go.

Where there is birth, there is death;

Living and dying have no difference.

Whatever is born must die; this is the nature of transitory existence. Buddhists therefore seek liberation from psychological subjection to impermanent things. According to the Dhammapada, Buddha said, "What attachment is there when one has seen these white bones as like gourds discarded in autumn?"

Whoever is apprehensive of birth and death here

Should desire the rejuvenating elixir.

The Sufi master Hadrat Ali said, "The world is a transitory abode, not a permanent abode. And the people in it are of two sorts; one who sells his soul and ruins it; and one who ransoms his soul and frees it." Buddha said, "What mirth is there, what joy, while constantly burning? Shrouded in darkness, why not seek a light?"

Whoever roams the universe, even the heavens

Never becomes free of old age and death.

Buddha said, "There is nowhere in the world---not in the sky, not in the sea, not in the depths of the earth---where death will not overcome you." The Sufi master Ali said, "Whoever capitulates to the perishing of this world and the next perishes in them."

Whether action's caused by birth, or birth by action,

Saraha says, the Truth is inconceivable.

The Flower Ornament Scripture says, "All consequences are born from actions; like dreams, they're not truly real. They continually die away, moment to moment, the same as before and after. Of all things seen in the world, only mind is the host; by grasping forms according to interpretation, it becomes deluded, not true to reality. All philosophies in the world are mental fabrications; there has never been a doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things."